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Joan of Arc
Ernest Meissonier (French, 1815–1891)
c. 1889
- Medium
- graphite, red chalk, colored washes, and black and white gouache
- Classification
- Drawing
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 18.8 x 30.3 cm (7 3/8 x 11 15/16 in.)
- Culture
- France, 19th century
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Drawings
- Credit line
- Bequest of Muriel Butkin
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
This drawing is a rare study relating to Ernest Meissonier's never-realized mural for the Pantheon in Paris. After seeking and receiving the commission in 1874, Meisonnier procrastinated on the project for many years. Here, the French heroine Joan of Arc appears at center, without a helmet, on a bare white horse, staring ahead with steadfast calm. The figure of Joan in this drawing appears to correspond to the subject in a now-lost design for the complete painting, which Meissonier presented in 1889.
